Category Archives: Technology and Society

The Asteroid Retrieval Mission

Lee Billings describes the ARM policy mess.

It’s a mission they came up with for an overpriced, non-existent and unnecessary rocket looking for a mission. And note this rationale:

She and other NASA officials note that the advanced propulsion required for ARM would be enabling technology for a broad range of future missions and that ARM would be a crucial test for many deep-space activities crucial for someday reaching Mars. And it would do all this while keeping astronauts sufficiently close to home so that if something goes wrong, they could attempt an emergency return to Earth.

Safety is the highest priority.

Changing Junkyards

It’s not the way it used to be.

Longer ago than I care to think about (OK, four decades or so), I regularly visited a place out in Holly, MI to scrounge parts for my British sports cars. Every other time or so, when I’d go out, and come back with the part I needed, the owner (or manager) would ask me if I wanted a job. The last time I did it was in the nineties, when I went to a place on Hawthorne Blvd in Hawthorne to get a distributor for my Honda Accord, whose shaft had sheared off on the 405 in Orange County.

Another Green “Stimulus” Fail

Google and others want a taxpayer bail out for their desert bird roaster.

That looks like a nice bill for the new Congress to make Obama have to sign.

More at (appropriately) Powerline:

The sheer temerity of the request is almost outweighed by the unintended humor of their explanation for the failure of their project: the Sun isn’t shining as much as they thought it would. But I think they’re barking up the wrong tree: rather than ask for your money so they don’t have to use their money, they should ask the guy who said he would make the oceans recede, to order the Sun to stop slacking — rudely continuing to shine as it has for five billion years — and brighten up for Google, NRG, and Obama’s legacy.

What fools these mortals who support this insanity be.